Padre Balli Park — Attraction in Corpus Christi

The $25/ night sites is what I am rating. As the $50/night full hookups would get 5 stars. We stay in the lesser priced older camp side to save money on our tighter budget, but consider staying in the full hookups for the nicer quality of it, but just have not splurged there yet. I call the old camp the "fish camp". Plenty of potholes requiring slow entry and departure on this side of the camp. The picnic table is in tandem with the neighbor picnic table, both between campers, with "no privacy" feel. No frills on this side, and a view of the back side of the dunes. You can walk across to the Bob Hall Pier, (Mickel May's was destroyed in the hurricane and hadn't been rebuilt yet,) and the beach. We usually drive down a ways to set up our canopy on the beach. Half of the old camp is parallel to the beach at diagonals, the other half is perpendicular. We would like to open our camper canopy when it is not too windy, but depends on which direction your camper faces, it could catch the wind head on. It does have gated entry/exits for the entire camp. You are allowed to use the newer bath house on the full hookup side, but the original older camp side bath house is old, I don't use it. The office is nice and staff is very friendly. They also have beach side recreational rental items. This visit, we were arriving about 15 minutes after closing and the staff member waited for us, which I thought was so very nice of her! This park suffices for a place to park your camper and sleep, to allow sweet time on the beach. We like that the drive to this camp is only about 2 1/2 hours from San Antonio, and very conveniently located. Don't look for frills on the old camp...

The best county park in Texas. The staff treat you like family. They go out of their way to make sure your experience was positive. Bathrooms, power ans showers- free once u paid the cheapest rent in the business. You can see the ocean from your tent, for most of the sites anyway. It's quiet, except for the construction going on on the rebuilding of the pier, but they leave about 5pm and then its only the ocean you hear. No shade is about the biggest gripe I have, its windy most the time and I've lost so many tents to storms there that I finally bought an inflatable one and while it survives the wind there, it is still blown down when it storms there. They have a laundry room, only one of the dryers and one washer works, but its hardly ever being used by anyone so there's no problem usually. Staff clean the showers/bathrooms at least a couple times a day- never seen them gross like some parks, and they are polite when you have to use one and they are working on them- they will point one out for you where most the other parks here in Texas are going to tell you to come back after they finish. The power boxes are strong enough to power an air conditioner and lights and TV if you get down like that when you camp. I had a dog get scared by coyotes one night and pulled the faucet off in the middle of the night and they had it fixed the very next day. I...

This is simply one of the cleanest waters this side of Texas compared to Galveston or Corpus Christi. Not a lot of establishments around the beach area save for ample charging outlets for RV's, which require a parking permit. Bring your own refreshments/food or you'll starve or dehydrate. Most other places, other than being free from entrance fees, one can simply park off-roaders (or an AWD) along the shore which, IMHO, is the reason I'll keep coming back here. Once on the beach, there are lifeguard chairs and a public restroom. By the way, one cannot see the beach from the main road or the access roads because of the elevated sand mound.

The whole stretch of this beach is maintained mostly by mother nature so please pick up trash you see along the shores. There are plenty of dried kelp/seaweeds washed ashore which (my wife and I discovered) is very useful to get the bits and pieces of tar sticking to your feet (not too many but i guess this was from the huge oil spill from way back). Also, the place have plenty of small wildlife scattered along the shore: shellfish, hermit crabs, birds, and a few which I will not presume to know the name of. I believe the further one goes south, the better chance of seeing turtle hatchlings. Make the most out of this. With the emergence of developments in and around the area, this is not going to remain...